The presidential campaign of 2020 is gathering steam. Donald Trump and Mike Pence will run for reelection. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are slugging it out for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Routinely, political operators tell us that this year’s election will be the most important one of our lifetimes, if not forever. Barack Obama, among countless others, asks us to view 2020 this way.
To get some perspective, let’s begin by asking which presidential election since the end of World War II, if any, presented a truly significant choice.
Eisenhower vs. Stevenson? During their second contest, in 1956, I was writing editorials for a college newspaper. Picking up on the rhetoric of the time, I described Ike as a man “peering down the green fairways of indifference.” I passionately preferred the eloquent former governor of Illinois. But how much difference did it really make which candidate won?
JFK vs. Nixon? Remember, this was more than a decade before Watergate. Nixon was already a flawed man, for sure, but JFK was no angel either. Whatever I was thinking as I cast my first vote for president, 1960 did not present a fateful choice for the republic.
Carter vs. Ford (1976)? Carter vs. Reagan (1980)? Reagan vs. Mondale (1984)? How much different would the “road not taken” have been in those cases?
In 2020, it really does matter who wins. In fact, there is really only one presidential election in American history that matches this one in significance.
In 1860, the choice was between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas (among others). What was at stake in that contest?
The choice had to do with whether the U.S. would affirm the “proposition” on which the Declaration of Independence was based, that all men are created equal. At Gettysburg, Lincoln clarified what the Union armies were fighting for. Under his leadership, he said, the United States would remain committed to “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
During the campaign of 1860, Lincoln did not know what lay ahead. He did not anticipate the catastrophe of civil war, much less what he intended to do if it broke out. His election did not amount to a mandate for any particular course of action.
Back to the stakes in 2020. Once again, we are fighting for democracy, trying to discern what it requires of us.
In 2016 Donald Trump won largely by tapping into the resentment that many voters felt toward their lot in life. Too many of their fellow citizens, they thought, viewed them as deplorable. Trump took advantage of this anger, fanned it with passionate rhetoric and rode it to victory, in the Electoral College, over Hillary Clinton.
How has he wielded the awesome powers of the presidency?
■ He has repeatedly called for a wall on our southern border, to keep Hispanic immigrants out. He has trashed the reputation of the United States as a refuge for people fleeing brutal regimes.
■He abruptly withdrew from the multinational Paris accord on climate change.
■He withdrew America’s participation in the multinational agreement with Iran regarding their nuclear program.
■He sided with Putin against our own intelligence agencies. He appointed a political ally with no relevant experience to be his interim chief of U.S. intelligence.
■He was impeached by the House of Representatives for abusing the powers of his office, then declared himself exonerated when the Senate failed to convict him. He has been emboldened by this verdict, doubling down on the behavior that led to his impeachment.
In his argument for the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison framed the challenge this way. Democracies, he said, are particularly vulnerable when “instability, injustice and confusion” shake the foundations of public order. These are the “mortal diseases from which popular governments have everywhere perished.” Not many have survived for long, he wrote, because the seeds of these ills are “sown in the nature of man.”
The founders were not fools. They knew that people, all people, are sinners. To counter evil impulses, the framers’ design had safeguards. It consisted of three branches. Internal checks and balances encouraged and enabled officials to defend themselves against the ambition of people in other branches. Ours was also a federal system, reserving important powers for state and local governments.
These arrangements have generally worked to frustrate demagogues and protect liberty, but over the centuries they have also proven vulnerable to abuse.
The danger this time may not be mortal. So far only the Civil War has presented a truly mortal danger to the American constitutional experiment.
But this one is serious. Our president has been impeached for abusing the powers of his office, but he survived that challenge. It seems only to have emboldened him.
Now it is up to the voters. Can we reject a leader who has used a period of national distress to enhance his own personal fortune? Can we defeat a man who has no respect for the rule of law, who treats every demonstration of personal independence, even those posed by those within his administration, as a threat to his very existence?
Do our institutions and our leaders know how to meet this challenge? Are we, as citizens of this republic, ready to answer the call?
Don Robinson is emeritus professor of government and American studies at Smith College. He can be reached at DRobinso@smith.edu.